European Commission to invest €30 billion in Research, Science, and Innovation

Today the European Commission plans to spend €30 billion of the EU research and innovation funding program Horizon 2020 during 2018-2020, including €2.7 billion to kick-start a European Innovation Council.

Artificial Intelligence, genetics, blockchain: science is at the core of today’s most promising breakthrough innovations,” said Carlos Moedas, Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation. “Europe is a world leader in science and technology and will play a major role in driving innovation. The Commission is making a concerted effort – including with the European Innovation Council which takes its first steps today – to give Europe’s many innovators a springboard to become world leading companies.”

Horizon 2020, the EU’s €77 billion research and innovation funding programme, supports scientific excellence in Europe and has contributed to high-profile scientific breakthroughs such as the discovery of exoplanets and gravitational waves. Over the next 3 years, the Commission will seek greater impact of its research funding by focusing on fewer, but critical topics such as migration, security, climate, clean energy and digital economy. Horizon 2020 will also be more geared towards boosting breakthrough, market-creating innovation.

Horizon 2020 is the EU’s biggest ever research and innovation framework program with a budget of €77 billion over seven years (2014-2020). While most research and innovation activities are still underway or yet to start, the program is delivering. Horizon 2020 researchers have contributed to major discoveries like exoplanets, the Higgs boson and gravitational waves, and at least 19 Nobel Prize winners received EU research funding prior or after their award.

Supporting breakthrough, market-creating innovation

Since the beginning of its mandate, the Juncker Commission has been working hard to give Europe’s many innovative entrepreneurs every opportunity to thrive. Now, the Commission is launching the first phase of the European Innovation Council.Between 2018 and 2020, the Commission will mobilize €2.7 billion from Horizon 2020 to support high-risk, high-gain innovation to create the markets of the future. Moreover, Horizon 2020 will make better use of its “crack the challenge” prizes to deliver breakthrough technology solutions to pressing problems faced by our citizens.

The 2018-2020 Work Program will focus efforts on fewer topics with bigger budgets, directly supporting the Commission’s political priorities:

A low-carbon, climate resilient future: €3.3 billion

Circular Economy: €1 billion

Digitizing and transforming European industry and services: €1.7 billion

Security Union: €1 billion

Migration: €200 million

€2.2 billion will be earmarked for clean energy projects in four interrelated areas: renewables, energy efficient buildings, electro-mobility and storage solutions, including €200 million to support the development and production in Europe of the next generation of electric batteries.

Boosting ‘blue sky’ research

At the same time, Horizon 2020 will continue to fund ‘curiosity-driven science’ (often referred to as ‘blue sky science’ or ‘frontier research’). The annual Work Program of the European Research Council for 2018, adopted in August, will enable support for excellent researchers with nearly €1.86 billion. Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, which fund fellowships for researchers at all stages of their careers, receive a boost with €2.9 billion in total over three years.

The new Work Program also strengthens international cooperation in research and innovation. It will invest over €1 billion in 30 flagship initiatives in areas of mutual benefit. Examples include working with Canada on personalized medicine, with the US, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Australia on road transport automation, with India on water challenges and with African countries on food security and renewable energies.

Open Science

The program marks a step change in promoting Open Science by shifting from publishing research results in scientific publications towards sharing knowledge sooner in the research process. €2 billion will be channelled to support Open Science, and €600 million will be dedicated to the European Open Science Cloud, European Data Infrastructure and High Performance Computing.

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